CONSOLIDATED GUIDELINES on the use of ANTIRETROVIRAL DRUGS FOR TREATING AND PREVENTING HIV INFECTION

Publication year:

2013

Corporate author:

WHO

Publication details:

London, WHO,2013

Abstract:

With this publication, WHO issues its first consolidated guidelines for the use of antiretroviral drugs to treat and prevent HIV infection. The guidelines are ambitious in their expected impact, yet simplified in their approach, and firmly rooted in evidence. They take advantage of several recent trends, including a preferred treatment regimen that has been simplified to a single fixed-dose combination pill taken once per day, which is safer and affordable.The guidelines also take advantage of evidence demonstrating the multiple benefits of antiretroviral therapy. With the right therapy, started at the right time, people with HIV can now expect to live long and healthy lives. They are also able to protect their sexual partners and infants as the risk of transmitting the virus is greatly reduced. The guidelines represent another leap ahead in a trend of ever-higher goals and ever greater achievements. In Africa, the region that bears the brunt of the HIV epidemic, an estimated 7.5 million people were receiving treatment at the end of 2012, compared with only 50,000 a decade earlier. Worldwide, some 9.7 million people were receiving treatment, indicating that the global target of providing antiretroviral therapy to 15 million people by 2015 is within reach. The present achievement represents the fastest scale-up of a life-saving public health intervention in history.